Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States: The Suburbanization of the United States

Annotation This first full-scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe

in America, In Contrast To Almost Anywhere Else In The World, The Good Life Means Traveling A Long Distance To Get To Work. How And Why This Came To Be Our Cultural Norm Is The Subject Of This Long-awaited Book.
Because More Than Two-thirds Of All Dwellings Are Single Family Homes Surrounded By An Ornamental Yard, Suburbia Is The Most Distinctive Physical Characteristic Of Modern American Society. crabgrass Frontier Is The First Book To Trace The Growth Of Suburbs In America From Their Origins In The 1820's—in Brooklyn Heights Opposite Manhattan—until The Present Day. Combining Social History With Economic And Architectural History, The Book Discusses Suburban Communities In Every Section Of The Country As Well As Making Comparisons With Europe And Japan.
Jackson Considers Such Intriguing Questions As Why Transportation Technology Changed The Shape Of American Cities More Than European Ones, Why The Family Room And The Television Set Replaced The Stoop And The Street As The Focus Of Social Interaction, How The Evolution Of The Garage Reflected Increasing Affection For The Automobile, How Federal Housing Programs Undermined Inner City Neighborhoods, And How Government Policies Insured The Collapse Of The Nation's Once Superb Mass Transit System. The Book Shows Not Only That Americans Have Long Preferred A Detached Dwelling To A Row House, Rural Life To City Life, And Owning To Renting, But Also That Suburbanization Has Been As Much A Governmental As A Natural Process.
about The Author:
Kenneth T. Jackson Is A Professor Of History At Columbia University And The Author Of the Ku Klux Klan In The City.

Throughout history, the treatment and arrangement of shelter have revealed more about a particular people than have any other products of the creative arts. This book is about American housing. The physical organization of our neighborhoods, roads, yards, houses, and apartments sets up a living pattern that conditions our behavior. The physical pattern of housing development that Americans have chosen reflects a deliberate choice to emphasize separateness in our most dominant residential housing pattern: that of suburbia. Suburbia manifests fundamental American characteristics such as conspicuous consumption, a reliance upon the private automobile, upward mobility, the separation of the family into nuclear units, the widening division between work and leisure, and a tendency toward racial and economic exclusiveness. Several themes that recur in this book and are fundamental to understanding the suburban pattern of living are the importance of land developers, cheap housing lots, inexpensive construction methods, improved transportation technology, abundant energy, government subsidies, and racial stress. Finally, this book indicates that suburbanization has been as much a governmental as a natural process. Cover Copyright Acknowledgments Contents Introduction 1. Suburbs As Slums 2. The Transportation Revolution and the Erosion of the Walking City 3. Home, Sweet Home: The House and the Yard 4. Romantic Suburbs 5. The Main Line: Elite Suburbs and Commuter Railroads 6. The Time of the Trolley 7. Affordable Homes for the Common Man Illustrations 1 8. Suburbs into Neighborhoods: The Rise and Fall of Municipal Annexation 9. The New Age of Automobility 10. Suburban Development Between the Wars 11. Federal Subsidy and the Suburban Dream: How Washington Changed the American Housing Market 12. The Cost of Good Intentions: The Ghettoization of Public Housing in the United States 13. The Baby Boom and the Age of the Subdivision 14. The Drive-in Culture of Contemporary America Illustrations 2 15. The Loss of Community in Metropolitan America 16. Retrospect and Prospect Appendix Notes Index This first full scale history of the development of the American suburb examines how "the good life" in America came to be equated with the a home of one's own surrounded by a grassy yard and located far from the urban workplace. Integrating social history with economic and architectural analysis, and taking into account such factors as the availability of cheap land, inexpensive building methods, and rapid transportation, Kenneth Jackson chronicles the phenomenal growth of the American suburb from the middle of the 19th century to the present day. He treats communities in every section of the U.S. and compares American residential patterns with those of Japan and Europe. In conclusion, Jackson offers a controversial prediction: that the future of residential deconcentration will be very different from its past in both the U.S. and Europe Chronicles the development of American suburbs, compares American residential patterns with those of Europe and Japan, and discusses how society's views of the metropolis have changed throughout history Written in cuneiform on a clay tablet, this letter to the King of Persia in 539 B.C. represents the first extant expression of the suburban ideal.